SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 201 May, 2010 Notes on the Earliest Sanskrit Word Known in Chinese by Hoong Teik TOH Victor H. Mair, Editor Sino-Platonic Papers Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA [email protected] www.sino-platonic.org SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS FOUNDED 1986 Editor-in-Chief VICTOR H. MAIR Associate Editors PAULA ROBERTS MARK SWOFFORD SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series dedicated to making available to specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor-in-chief actively encourages younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. Contributions in any of the major scholarly languages of the world, including romanized modern standard Mandarin (MSM) and Japanese, are acceptable. 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To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Notes on the Earliest Sanskrit Word Known in Chinese* by Hoong Teik TOH Instances of Old Indian words phonetically transcribed in Old Chinese constitute the best linguistic evidence for China’s early cultural contacts with her western neighbor1. The importance of even the simple discovery of any of these instances cannot be overstated. The chapter “Daoying xun” 道應訓 in Fascicle 12 of the Huainan Zi 淮南子 gives a list of items given in ransom for King Wen 文王, who was held in custody in Youli 羑里 by Qu Shang 屈商, who himself served the Shang 商 emperor Zhou 紂. The list includes rare, exotic animals and objects that Sanyi Sheng 散宜生, allegedly a minister of King Wen, had acquired at the cost of a thousand units of gold: (1) 騶虞 (2) 雞斯之乘 (3) 玄玉百工 (4) 大貝百朋 (5) 玄豹 (6) 黃羆 (7) 青豻 (8) 白虎文皮 * The following brief notes were written originally in Chinese under the title “Hanchu fangshi suolu gu Yinduyu” 漢 初方士所錄古印度語 and are to appear in the author’s Miscellanea historico-philologica (Lishi yuwen luncong chubian 歷史語文論叢初編), forthcoming in Beijing. An English translation is here published thanks to the encouragement and help of Victor H. Mair. 1 Some linguistic evidence for pre-Buddhist Sino-Indian contact/interaction, in the form of five loan translations in Chinese/Sanskrit, has been offered in Zhu Qingzhi, “Some Linguistic Evidence for Early Cultural Exchange between China and India”, Sino-Platonic Papers 66, March 1995. I am indebted to Victor Mair for this reference. H. T. Toh, “Notes on the Earliest Sanskrit Word Known in Chinese,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 201 (May, 2010) Of these, no. (2) “the jisi mount” 雞斯之乘 is of particular interest here. Gao You 高誘 (early third century CE) glossed jisi as “supernatural horse[s]” (shenma 神馬, HNZ: 130a). The Huainan Zi was compiled by a large congregation of visiting scholars (binke fangshu zhi shi 賓 客方術之士)2 under the auspices of Liu An 劉安 (179–122 BCE), Prince of Huainan 淮南. The information on the jisi horse seems to have reached the Huainan region through this scholarly circle. The section of Hainei bei jing 海內北經 of the Shanhai jing 山海經 refers to the piebald horse (wenma 文馬) in the country of the Quanrong 犬戎國 as having “a white body, red mane, golden eyes” 縞身朱鬛，目若黃金. In his scholia, Guo Pu 郭璞 (276–324 CE) quotes the Liutao 六韜: [It is] motley, red-maned, golden-eyed, with its neck (that is to say: its mane) like the tail [feathers] of a rooster. It is named the jisi mount. 文身朱鬣，眼若黄金， 項若雞尾，名曰雞斯之乘。(SHJ 12: 1b)3 He also quotes the Shangshu dazhuan 尚書大傳: [It is] motley, red-maned, with eyes like the rooster’s. 駮身，朱鬣，雞目。(SHJ 12: 1b) It must be noted that jisi is the Old Chinese transcription of Sanskrit keśī “the long- haired” < keśa “hair, mane.” Here the character ji 雞 (Old Chinese *ke, Middle Chinese *ke, *kei) has only the transcriptional value *ke. Owing to the fact that Chinese ji means “chicken,” the Han people were soon led astray to connect the name with the rooster. The red color of the horse’s mane, emphasized by the Chinese writers, may have 2 HS: 2145: 招致賓客、方術之士數千人，作為內書二十一篇，外書甚眾，又有中篇八卷，言神仙黃白之 術，亦二十餘萬言. For the term fangshu zhi shi, see the remarks on fangshi 方士 below. 3 The lost passage of the Liutao quoted in Fascicle 93 of the Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚 (624 CE), though slightly different from Guo Pu’s, does not differentiate the jisi from the piebald horse of the Quanrong. It reads: 得犬戎氏文 馬，毫毛朱鬣，目如黃金，名雞斯之乘，以獻商王。“[Sanyi Sheng] acquired the Quanrong’s piebald horse which has fine, red mane, golden eyes, and was named the jisi mount, using it as a present for the Shang emperor.” 2 H. T. Toh, “Notes on the Earliest Sanskrit Word Known in Chinese,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 201 (May, 2010) something to do with the flames of Agni (Ṛg-Veda X, 136.1: keśy agniṃ keśī viṣaṃ). The mythical equine in Hinduism was borrowed into Buddhism and became known, through translation, to Chinese Buddhists later. In the Chinese translation of the Abhiniṣkramaṇa-sūtra by Jñānagupta (sixth–seventh centuries CE), the name Keśī is transcribed as jishi 雞尸 and glossed as “luxuriant hair” (Cf. Latin caesariēs “luxuriant/beautiful hair”). In this sūtra, in the section of the stories of the five hundred bhikṣus, Gautama Buddha recalls that one of his previous incarnations was a Pegasus-like horse: There was a horse king named Keśī (the gloss reads: it means duofa 多髮 “luxuriant hair” in the Sui 隋 [i.e. Chinese] language) whose form was handsome and pleasant looking. He was as white as the [snow-white] gemstones and shells. His head was dark red. He moved as swiftly as the wind. His voice was as mellow as [the sound produced by] the finest of drums. [… …] At that time (Ch. ershi, Skt. tatkāla), those rākṣasīs, having heard the compassionate voice of the horse king and the sounds of escape like the strong wind, woke up suddenly. Looking all around for the merchants in vain, they finally saw the merchants ride on the back of the horse king—holding onto his hair, mane and members—and make away through the air. [… …] O bhikṣus! What do you think? Do you wonder who the horse king Keśī was at that time? Do not think otherwise! He was precisely my incarnation. As for the merchant chief among the five hundred men, he was the incarnation of none other than the bhikṣu Śāriputra. 有一馬王，名曰雞尸 隋 言多髮，形貌端正，見者樂觀，白如珂貝，其頭紺黑，行疾如風，聲如妙 鼓。[… …] 爾時彼諸羅剎女輩，聞彼馬王哀愍之聲，復聞走聲狀如猛風， 忽從睡覺，覓彼商人，悉皆不見，處處觀看，乃遙見彼諸商人輩乘馬王上， 或執諸毛、髮鬣、支節，乘空而去 [… …]。諸比丘，於汝意云何? 若疑於時 雞尸馬王，豈異人乎? 勿生異念，即我身是。五百人中大商主者，豈異人乎? 即舍利弗比丘是也。(Taishō, No. 190, Vol. 3, pp. 881a, 882a, 882b) 3 H. T. Toh, “Notes on the Earliest Sanskrit Word Known in Chinese,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 201 (May, 2010) It is philologically intelligible that the Buddhist narrative involving this horse often stresses the virtues of its hair and mane (keśa). Thus we read in the anonymously translated scripture Wuming luocha ji 無明羅剎集: On the shoal there was a supernatural horse king [...] whose 84,000 strands of hair all grew long, holding onto which, anyone would be extricated from sufferings [...]. The Buddha is likened to the supernatural horse king: with his stout body symbolizing wholesome virtues and right intention (samyak-saṃkalpa), together with his 84,000 strands of virtuous hair symbolizing the “equipoise of mindfulness” (smṛti-samādhi), he gives rise to the compassionate heart for all sentient beings. 海渚中有神馬王，[…] 八萬四千諸毛森然俱長，挽捉毛者皆 得脫苦 […]。神馬王者，喻佛以善功德正志堅實肥大之身，以正念定八萬四 千諸善之毛，為諸眾生起悲愍心。(Taishō, No. 720, Vol. 16, p. 857b) The very fact that Sanskrit keśī had been introduced into pre-Buddhist China and is well preserved in the Huainan Zi, which, to a certain degree, is Daoist-oriented, seems to have escaped the notice of both Buddhist and Daoist scholars in China.